The present application addresses the need for additional safety systems in grills to prevent fires from occurring. One way to prevent fires is to clean the drip tray between each use. Methods and systems are provided to encourage this by forcing the user to interact with the tray between each use.
Obesity together with heart disease has been linked to high consumption of saturated fats and cholesterol found in most meat products. The American Heart Association (“AHA”) has recommended that individuals should, in order to reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer, reduce their daily intake of saturated fats and cholesterol.
Grills in which the radiant cooking elements and grilling space have been arranged vertically are particularly well adapted to remove fats from meat that is being cooked. As the food is suspended between the cooking elements gravity and pressure of a holding clasp act on liquefied fats and oils such that they drip out of and away from the food being cooked. Vertical grills have been recommended by heart physicians as a suitable device to help patients and the public reduce their intake of saturated fats that would otherwise be ingested with conventionally cooked meats. The vertical radiant heat grilling configuration was much favoured by the public as a real grill over ‘grilling’ on or frying on flat metal, Teflon or other fire resistant surfaces.
However, there were problems associated with prior art vertical grills. The prior art vertical grill used an internal drip tray to retain fats and oils that drip down from the food being grilled between two radiant cooking elements. Unfortunately, the prior art vertical grill with an internal drip tray is prone to fire flare-ups and smoke.
As a result if the internal drip tray is not cleaned thoroughly before each use to ensure there are no combustible fats or solids present in the tray, there is a good chance that the contents of the tray will combust. Further, users were also recommended to add a small quantity of cold water to the internal drip tray to reduce the volatility of the liquefied fats and oils that accumulated in the tray.
Because the drip tray was internal to the device some people were unaware of the requirement to clean out the drip tray and/or to add water and as a result the device would sometimes catch fire.
As a result of fire risk, some prior art vertical grill designs employed an internal drip tray that features a fire suppressing perforated metal cover. However this design had its drawbacks. First, the perforated cover actually makes it more likely that a user of the device will forget to empty the contents of the drip tray as the retained oils and fats will be mostly obscured by the internal drip tray cover. In such a case where the internal drip tray is hidden from view within the body of the vertical grill, dangerous reserves of retained fats and oils could easily go unobserved. Further, the use of a perforated metal fire suppressing shield resulted in solid spoils and embers from above, coming to rest on the protective fire shield. These solids sometimes blocked the perforations resulting in an accumulation of fats and oils on its surface which, along with the solids themselves, can often result in smouldering embers and ignited fats entering into the internal cavities of the device, and/or cause the fats in the drip tray to ignite despite the presence of the fire suppressing shield. It is a common complaint by users of the vertical grill that a blocked or inappropriately prepared internal drip tray can permit smouldering embers to activate kitchen fire alarms.
It is an object of the present invention to improve on the design of prior art vertical grills and/or to substantially ameliorate some of the shortcomings of the prior art vertical grills.